two in one!

Aaaaah, nothing says "welcome home" like a 30-day eviction notice! After helping my parents pack up the house they've been living in for 20 years, I returned to Williamsburg to find two packages and a letter sitting outside my door. The guidebook I'm freelance editing for, yay! The t-shirt I bought on Ebay, yay! "Gina, We all got these notices on 11/29/07 from [scary landlord.] It doesn't seem to be an actual court order." Huh.

Apparently, he wants us all out by December 31st. Happy holidays!

The legalities regarding my housing situation are unclear, to say the least, and my fellow basement dwellers seem to think that this might be fightable via some legal aid thing for poor people, but based on my last experience with wealthy Hassidic landlords (not to, um, stereotype, or anything) I am not optimistic. Maybe I can get at least a month or two free rent before he actually kicks us out on the street? Maybe we can have a gigantic boozefest down here when that does happen? Maybe this is the motivation I need to throw away my bohemian dream and start thinking about someday making a decent living, with a lease and health insurance and vacation and all that?

Alls I know is I'm never complaining about being bored again. Good ol' Life will always take care of that.

i, like, i just ate chinese food earlier

The computer is rocking my world today. Which is fortunate for me, since there's nowhere else to go in my soon-to-be former childhood home without running into a roofer, floorer, and/or packer.

James Franco, you had me at Freaks and Geeks. This is just too good.

i'm cultured

At last, a Williamsburg gallery has some art I can understand and appreciate.

brr

Just got to Wisconsin. It is ten degrees here. I'm guessing Al Gore doesn't spend much time in the Midwest.

hallmark moment

This year I got invited to six Thanksgivings. I don't think I've ever given a second thought to the actual meaning of the holiday until now. I am a lucky, lucky lady.

Happy Bacon-Wrapped-Turducken Day*!


*Note: I will not be dining on bacon-wrapped turducken tomorrow. I stole this picture off the internet. But someday, someday...

i'm bored

Not in the I-have-nothing-to-do-right-now sense, or even the quarter-life-crisis-what-am-I-doing-with-my-life sense. I just, like, need a little something extra going on. My recent relationship sucked the life out of me, and now that I've gotten that life back, I don't exactly know what to do with it.

For once, I'm being kind of mature about things. This month I paid my credit card bill a whole day in advance! I've been exercising regularly and reducing my alcohol and cigarette intake, somewhat! I hardly ever watch television, except for a few special shows, and have been reading quite a bit! I've even taken a chill pill and let my current recipe-for-disaster work-related crush be nothing more than that. I'm totally not returning my rented DVD's on time, but whatever.

Go me! But I still feel the need to go work on a goat farm, and find new ways to spruce up my apartment, which doesn't even have four complete walls, and go to grad school for some useless degree, and move to Canada for the free healthcare and strapping gents, and become a food packaging designer/trashed furniture resurrecter/rock 'n roll flute player.

I know I need to just take some deep yoga breaths, appreciate my ridiculously fortunate job (tonight's quick-n-cheap tuna melt dinner featured fresh-baked seven-grain bread, pickled wax beans, Welsh sea salt, and four-year-old Grafton Village Vermont cheddar), and spend as much time as possible with my awesome friends. And maybe return my fucking movies*.

*Netflix is, sadly, not an option given my shared mailbox situation. I refrained from explaining this to a customer today who, when I asked if I'd find her recommendation in the documentary section, replied that I should just type the name of the movie in the "search" field.

miscellany

The Saturday before last Saturday, an Upper East Sideish lady came into my place of employment. Because she was so stereotypically obnoxious, I made sure to examine her black AmEx before smugly informing her that we only accept Visa and Mastercard. Serendipitously, today Gawker told of her upcoming novel about opening a restaurant in the Hamptons. I wonder if the "upscale food shop" in her "novel" was also sabotaged by her toddler son's apparent love of throwing products on the floor, rolling around on t-shirt displays, and screaming at the top of his lungs until he's fed some cheese. I also wonder if someone who can't tell the difference between fresh and cooked chorizo should be writing a food-related guidebook...

Speaking of food, I could not agree more with Frank Bruni's recent rant about the word "enjoy," a word that became dead to me one night as I was serving a fellow LES waiter who, when asked if I could clear his plate, responded with a smug, creepy, spine-tingling grin, "No, we're still enjoying." Though this is generally a case of the waitstaff being patronizing, there is also a flip-side. That is the customer name-asking, to which I now reply, "My name's Gina, what's your name? Oh, nice to meet you."

Somehow always speaking of food, my parents are leaving Wisconsin after 20 magical years. I'm truly saddened to be losing my childhood home, and I hope that their new residence in Chili, New York (that's pronouced like the words "chai" and "lie" put together), has the same amount of character. I'm sure it won't, being a suburb, but hey, at least there's a Wegman's.

stye me a river

Aaaand, today I've got a new entrant for the top prize in the "Most Obvious Lesson I Learned the Hard Way Embarassingly Late in Life" category.

Do not try on eye makeup at Sephora. Eye makeup that has been sitting out for days, weeks, months, who knows, coming into contact with air, grubby hands, coughing, and godknowswhat. DUH.

quote of the styles

It is with great shame that I admit the reasons for my weekly $4 Sunday Times purchase: the Style section, specifically for wedding announcements, and the Magazine for the crossword puzzle. Sometimes I go nuts and skim Travel and Real Estate too. Anyway, my favorite part this week comes from the Vows column. Jeff Greene, a 53-year-old "wealthy real estate developer who has homes in Malibu and Beverly Hills as well as a 145-foot yacht," expresses his joy over finally finding the love of his life, 32-year-old real-estater/Hampton party circuiter Mei Sze Chan, and concludes, "I just wish I had met Mei Sze 20 years ago."

Paging Chris Hansen...

i have been extremely productive today,

and Tinsley Mortimer is a genius.

after the cameras were turned off...

This video, though absurd, seems innocent enough.



Until you watch this one.

get your mind right

I do not understand this. Like, at all. It took me but two years of living in this fine city to learn the most important lesson I've ever learned (aside from love yourself before you can really love another, and put away the freakin credit card). And that lesson is, DO NOT WAIT IN LINE. Aside from the airport, the post office, and the DMV, I can think of no reason to wait in a line in New York. There are so many different things to do, and different versions of the same things, that lines are truly a waste of time and an unnecessary source of frustration and anxiety. You can't control when the Duane Reade cashier gets off the cell phone, or how many G trains go by before you finally see an F, but you can wait two weeks until the hubbub has diminished to get that burger, that burger that is probably not much, if at all, better than a zillion other places' burgers.

In other news, I am now friends with Tionna Tee Smalls! Well, Facebook friends at least. Still, yay!